Intel 22nm Core i7 3770K reaches 6.6 GHz

Back in February, the folks at 3DCenter managed to break a 100-percent overclock on Intel's 22nm Core i7-3770K, the company's flagship quad-core Ivy Bridge desktop processor with 128 KB of L1 cache (4x32 KB), 1 MB of L2 cache (4x256 KB) and 8 MB of L3 cache. The processor operates at a stock frequency 3.50 GHz, and as another source has just confirmed, the chip is more than capable of breaking a 100-percent overclock provided the right base clock multiplier values, core voltages, extreme cooling and dedicated overclocking patience and voltage timing precision.

Image source: Expreview

On Tuesday, ultra high-performance overclocking enthusiast x-powerx800pro wanted to prove to the world that Intel's Core i7 3770K can reach 6.6 GHz using a base clock multiplier of 63x and a clock speed of 6584.86 MHz (104.52 x 63). Nevertheless, the raw compute performance resulting from such a massive overclock results in a SuperPi 1M calculation in just 5.585s, breaking HiCookie's August 24th world record of 5.781s on Intel's 32nm Core i7 Extreme 980X. Of course, the chip being used is an Intel Engineering Sample, possibly from a great cherry-picked batch at that, but the results have nevertheless been validated in CPU-Z 1.60.

Image source: Expreview

As a precaution, Expreview's page incorrectly identifies the chip as a 32nm processor, when it is in fact a 22nm Ivy Bridge engineering sample chip. However, more images of the achievement can be found here.